Category Archives: Phil Kelso

Woolwich Arsenal Manager Didn’t Win Promotion

During Arsenal’s third match of this season, BBC’s Jonathan Pearce came out with this fact:

“Not since Phil Kelso in 1904 has an Arsenal manager started with just one draw from their opening three games”

He was referring to Kelso’s first three games at the start of the 1904-05 season which was Woolwich Arsenal’s first in the top flight. However, whilst putting together our latest book – Arsenal: The Complete Record – we discovered that this wasn’t correct.

Arsenal Players Remembered 1914-1918

Today we pay tribute on Armistice Day to the players who before the war represented Woolwich Arsenal FC but who weren’t necessarily with the club at the beginning of the War. These men paid the ultimate sacrifice being Killed In Action or dying as a result of the war. We have also included players who received career ending wounds.

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For today’s game the manager and whole team must call upon the fighting spirit of Arsenal’s most pugnacious boss in its history. He stood up to the Manchester police as his team won away in 1906 to reach the Gunners first ever FA Cup semi-final.

Today Arsenal need the Phil Kelso spirit.

As you know we have been reproducing our programme work on the blog this season, well here is a match report in a slightly different format to those of this season, written for last season’s quarter-final programme against Everton. A prescient match up of the first FA cup tie between the two most successful teams in the competition’s history!

1904-05 Woolwich Arsenal in the Top Flight of English football

The previous season had seen Woolwich Arsenal promoted, amidst ordnance supplied fireworks and a pitch invasion, after a draw in the final home match of the season which saw the top flight guaranteed for the very first time. The pitch invasion managed to break much of the fencing surrounding the pitch, and this was the cue to allow the club to embark upon a major upgrade of the Manor Ground, in part to accommodate the extra crowd expected to witness the club in the highest league.